the web The Book Club Blog

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Ralph Nader and Christopher Hitchens

Triggered by Christopher Hitchens' article "Ralph Nader's Folly," in this month's (May, 2004) Vanity Fair, (which appears to be unavailable online) I think it is high time that the Book Club Blog takes a closer look beyond the Bush/Kerry dichotomy. I'll sort out the key points for the blog when I get a second.

If anyone can explain what on earth is going on in this sideshow to the US Elections 2004, please don't hesitate to do so. In fact any insights into Christopher Hitchens current frame of mind would be greatly appreciated.

- Ralph Nader for President 2004
- Ralph Nader, Wikipedia
- Ralph Nader: The Unchallenged Hero of Muslims, By Paul Sperry, FrontPageMagazine.com, March 26, 2004
- Journalist Christopher Hitchens: from "left" charlatan to mouthpiece for the Republican right, By David Walsh, World Socialist Web Site, 27 November 2000
- Murder was their only motive, Christopher Hitchens, Guardian, Wednesday September 26, 2001
- Brothers at war over Britain, BBC, October 15, 1999
More to follow, obviously.

- Second Thinking: What I got wrong about Iraq, Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Monday, April 19, 2004
"The thing that I most underestimated is the thing that least undermines the case. And it's not something that I overlooked, either. But the extent of lumpen Islamization in Iraq, on both the Khomeinist and Wahhabi ends (call them Shiite and Sunni if you want a euphemism that insults the majority), was worse than I had guessed.

And this is also why I partly think that Colin Powell, as reported by Woodward, was right. He apparently asked the president if he was willing to assume, or to accept, responsibility for the Iraqi state and society. The only possible answer, morally and politically, would have been "yes." The United States had already made itself co-responsible for Iraqi life, first by imposing the sanctions, second by imposing the no-fly zones, and third by co-existing with the regime. (Three more factors, by the way, that make the Vietnam comparison utterly meaningless.) This half-slave/half-free compromise could not long have endured.

The antiwar Left used to demand the lifting of sanctions without conditions, which would only have gratified Saddam Hussein and his sons and allowed them to rearm. The supposed neutrals, such as Russia and France and the United Nations, were acting as knowing profiteers in a disgusting oil-for-bribes program that has now been widely exposed. The regime-change forces said, in effect: Lift the sanctions and remove the regime. But in the wasted decade of sanctions-plus-Saddam, a whole paranoid and wretched fundamentalist underclass was created and exploited by the increasingly Islamist propaganda of the Baath Party. This also helps explain the many overlooked convergences between the supposedly "secular" Baathists and the forces of jihad.

When fools say that the occupation has "united" Sunni and Shiite, they flatter the alliance between the proxies of the Iranian mullahs and the Saudi princes. And they ignore the many pleas from disputed and distraught towns, from Iraqis who beg not to be abandoned to these sadistic and corrupt riffraff. One might have seen this coming with greater prescience. But it would have made it even more important not to leave Iraq to the post-Saddam plans of such factions. There was no way around our adoption of Iraq, as there still is not. It's only a pity that the decision to intervene was left until so many years had been consumed by the locust."

- Vietnam? Why the analogy doesn't hold water. Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Monday, April 12, 2004
"Here is the reason that it is idle to make half-baked comparisons to Vietnam. The Vietnamese were not our enemy, let alone the enemy of the whole civilized world, whereas the forces of jihad are our enemy and the enemy of civilization. There were some Vietnamese, even after the whole ghastly business, who were sorry to see the Americans leave. There were no Lebanese who were sad to see the Israelis leave. There would be many, many Iraqis who would be devastated in more than one way if there was another Somalian scuttle in their country. In any case, there never was any question of allowing a nation of this importance to become the property of Clockwork Orange holy warriors."

- Saddahmer Hussein: Forget Hitler and Stalin; Saddam's role model was the cannibal from Milwaukee. Christopher Hitchens, Slate, Monday, July 7, 2003.
"In the past few years, I have written often about whether the figure of Saddam Hussein is—or was—a model taken from Hitler, from Stalin, or from some combination of the two. It has occurred to me recently that it can all be put more simply. He is—or was—a reincarnation of Jeffrey Dahmer. Look in his kitchen drawer, and you will find instruments of torture. Look in his bathroom cabinet, and you will find poisons. Look under his floorboards, and you will find bones and skulls. Look in his flowerbed, and you will stumble over body parts. Look in the rest of the garden, and you will find a substantial piece of a nuclear centrifuge, employed to make weapons of mass destruction."

Posted by Nick @ 08:42 GMT

|